Student Led Research Symposium

For the last two years, the Knowledge and Information Services branch of the BC Ministry of Labour and Citizens Services has given all 9 BC Universities $30,000 each to award graduate student grants for Research in the Field of Social Policy.

On February 27th, the UVic Knowledge Mobilization Unit collaborated with the Knowledge and Information Services branch to organize a Symposium for the students who received these grants to present their work to Government officials and University representatives from across BC. There were over 80 attendees from various Ministries, Community agencies, and University departments, and the research that was presented by the graduate students was extremely well received.

The Knowledge Mobilization Unit at UVic has been responsible for administering these grants at UVic, and continues to work closely with the BC Government to encourage Government-University research partnerships and to support evidence-informed policy and decision making.

Social Inclusion for Health and Well Being in Program Evaluation – April 30

York Institute for Health Research (YIHR)
Social Inclusion for Health and Well Being in Program Evaluation
Thursday April 30, 2009, 8:30am-5:00pm, York University

The York Institute for Health Research is hosting a full-day workshop on program evaluation and social inclusion to launch their a program eavluation centre. The day includes a keynote address by Daniele Zanotti, CEO of the United Way for York Region, presentations by academic and community partners, and workshops on evaluation including arts-based evaluation and program evaluation methodology.

This event brings together academic and community researchers and professionals from health and health-related areas to share their knowledge and experiences in evaluating access and equity goals in program outcomes, as well as the strengths and challenges of applying social inclusion principles to program evaluation processes.

Issues of diversity and social inclusion have an impact on how programs and services are delivered to meet a wide range of client needs. Thus, diversity and social inclusion are critical to the evaluation of programs and their effectiveness. Funding agencies increasingly expect community organizations to conduct evidence-based program evaluations to demonstrate that their programs are making a difference for their diverse clients, and that their programs achieve social inclusion goals.

Objectives
Through attending this workshop, you will:
• Learn methods and tools for program evaluation;
• Learn the importance of social inclusion and evaluation in designing your project
• Learn about innovative program evaluation projects;
• Learn about the challenges of doing program evaluations;
• Develop networking opportunities for future research and program alliances, including connecting with the Centre for Program Evaluation;
• Share resources for professional use and development;
• Learn from funding bodies about programs, resources, expectations and trends for social inclusion and doing program evaluation with diverse populations.

Intended Audience
This event provides an opportunity for academics, community and advocacy group members, policy analysts, funders, independent and student researchers to share their experiences and knowledge of program evaluation and research on diversity and social inclusion.

Researchers and professionals from a diverse range of health/healthcare, health-related and policy sectors including, but not limited to, women’s, ethno-specific, disability, lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgender/queer (LGBTQ), Aboriginal, senior, youth and immigrant health services, and diversity, access and equity groups will attend panel sessions and workshops, and be invited to share poster presentations on the conference topic from a variety of disciplines.

Registration is $25 and space is limited so act now! The registration deadline is April 15th, 2009. To receive a registration form, please contact Dr. Yuka Nakamura at nakamura@yorku.ca.

Immigration and Human Services KM in the AM – April 28

The YorkU KM Unit will be hosting its next KM of the AM event on Tuesday, April 28th. The topic of the morning will focus on immigration and human services, with brief presentations by a university researcher and a community agency representative, followed by ample time for questions, discussion, and networking.

Confirmed Speakers:
- Valerie Preston, Director of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS) and Professor, Department of Geography, York University
- Stephen Lam, Director of Immigrant Services and Community Programmes, Catholic Community Services of York Region (CCSYR)

Date: Tuesday, April 28

Time: 8:45 to 10:45 am. Breakfast will be served at 8:45. The meeting will start at 9:00.

Location: York Regional Police District 4 Station
2700 Rutherford Rd
Vaughan, ON

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Space is limited. Kindly RSVP kejensen@yorku.ca to confirm your attendance.

Getting to Maybe

On June 4, 2008 I wrote about Using Evidence by Nutley, Walter and Davies. This book has been my principal KM reference but I have a new, equally favourite, book to recommend to you: Getting to Maybe by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman (of York’s Schulich School of Business, ) and Michael Quinn Patton. Using Evidence is about the science of research utilization (=knowledge mobilization) for policy and practice (=social innovation). Getting to Maybe is about the actors (=social innovators) who operate within a system of social innovation. Using case studies of successful social innovators, Getting to Maybe illustrates how social innovators can maximize the chances of creating an impact and it provides numerous recommendations for social innovators, their organizations (usually NGOs), their funders (usually Foundations) and their receptors (usually policy makers). Getting to Maybe doesn’t guarantee success or present a formula which, if followed, will generate results. Getting to Maybe focuses on key learnings that are important for all social innovators and their stakeholders.

Finally Getting to Maybe about creating the right conditions where maybe, change might happen.

This book contains valuable lessons and will inform much of the work of knowledge brokers. Order your copy here.

Some KM relevant messages from Getting to Maybe:

• Social innovation is a complex (as opposed to complicated) problem. Complexity science can guide approaches to social innovation.
• Relationships, amongst other attributes, are key for social innovation
• Individuals operate in systems and successful social innovators examine their own role in those systems
• Premature evaluation can stifle social innovation by seeking end points; developmental evaluation focuses on learnings not end points
• All systems must go through cycles of exploitation → conservation → release (=“creative destruction”) → reorganization in order to remain innovative and avoid the “rigidity gap”. This is why “success is not a fixed address”.
• Social innovation is catalyzed through connection, confrontation and collaboration.
• It is important to stand still, to reflect and analyze. Reflection is action. This is a particularly important message for me, personally, as I tend to race more than I reflect.
• Social Innovation is like improvising jazz: every player listens, understands and everyone leads from their own place of understanding.

Inspiring Words from Bangladesh Inspire Reflection

I am reading Getting to Maybe by Westley, Zimmerman & Patton (more on this book later) in which they reference the work of social innovator Muhammad Yunus, Head of the Economics Department at Chittagong University in Bangladesh. In 1974 Bangladesh was experiencing a famine but “the university grounds were an oasis”. Yanus wrote, “if a university is a repository of knowledge then some of this knowledge should spill over to the neighbouring communities. A university should not be an island where academics reach out at higher and higher levels of knowledge without sharing any of their findings”.

Theorizing that credit is a human right, he pioneered micro-credit giving small loans to groups of crafts people, many of the women. This process took a number of years of reflection and analysis following engaging many of the stakeholders involved before he took action. What do we learn from this social innovator? He is passionate but he questions. He acts in the face of uncertainty. His success was built on relationships. His success took time. Lessons for social innovation enabled by knowledge mobilization.

I am writing this on vacation in Barbados and I am struck by how all the guests at this lovely resort (see picture below) are white and all the staff are black and I realize this is not unique to the Caribbean. Next time you attend a conference observe how many of the university participants are of European descent and how many people serving you dinner are not and then use that as your opportunity to start your own reflection.

Tell us about your moments of reflection by clicking on the “comment” link above.

ResearchImpact meets in Victoria

♫“Though the weather outside was frightful, KM-ing is just delightful…”♪

Seriously though, Victoria had a blizzard while York was visiting and of course York got blamed. York traveled to UVic for our quarterly meeting March 8-10. The group met on a wide range of topics from operational updates to funding to common grant programs. We were pleased that we received applications to our KM grant funding programs: child and youth mental health (2 in York Region, 1 collaborative grant York-UVic) and poverty, housing & homelessness (1 collaborative grant York-UVic). These grant applications are under review and results will be announced early April for funding to start immediately. The most in depth discussion we had was on evaluation. Thanks to Professor Jim McDavid (UVic) who joined us to discuss our evaluation needs and to help us develop an evaluation framework for RI. We are following up on a number of his suggestions so that we can undertake a formative evaluation of RI over the summer.

We were also joined by York’s KM volunteer, Gary Myers, who demonstrated his efforts at developing a shared RI reference database. More work will be undertaken learn how this database can be shared amongst the RI partners but York and UVic, as well as our partners MUN and USask, are behind this effort. Gary also demonstrated his pilot mapping of community and government KM contacts for York. This work was well received and Gary will be extending his efforts to include UVic’s contact data.

Probably the most important meeting was dinner on Monday night at The Mint. Thanks to our server Jason we had a lovely evening of fun, good food, something to do with champagne + gin, and some great networking (otherwise known as conversation). We also took a very cold walk through the UVic flower gardens and while it was too early for the flowers the mobilizers were in full bloom.

ResearchImpact helps to launch Mobilizing Minds: Pathways to Young Adult Mental Health

David Phipps, ResearchImpact/York University
Tara Syed, Mobilizing Minds/Trent University

Mobilizing Minds is a $1.5M CIHR funded 5 year KM project which is a partnership between young adults and academic researchers (jointly lead by York and UManitoba). The project will develop tools to inform young adults’ decisions about mental health and will also study the process of KM and young adult/adult partnership. This past weekend (Feb 28 and March 1) the young adult leaders and adult mentors met at the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement in Toronto to launch the youth engagement aspect of the project. Young adults received an over view of the project and learned the basics of KM through the KM Rap (which may, or may not, be coming to a video near you…). The young adult leaders brainstormed ideas for young adult engagement on all the project teams and the young adult leaders identified two projects of particular interest to them.

1) By examining key organizations that have already undertaken the integrated health team approach, the young adult team will create a model for the integration of health care professionals into centres where normally only primary care physicians would be accessible. Another goal in this initiative is to develop the structure for a youth advisory board to provide feedback to the health team and to identify a youth advocate to help navigate new comers to the system.

2) Increase public awareness and education about treatment options (includes conventional medicine, alternative therapies, and psychological/cognitive therapies) available to those experiencing mental health issues and disorders. Efficacy, side effects and withdrawal symptoms, if any, will be included in the discussion of each treatment option.

Tara Syed is a 3rd year Biology major at Trent University and, partnered with ResearchImpact’s David Phipps, is the young adult leader on the Community Partnership Team. In addition to getting community and practitioner input into the Mobilizing Minds project Tara identified that it was equally important to get young adult input into policy decisions in community and practitioner organizations. Tara and David agreed to identify lead community and practitioner champions in Toronto and Peterborough and jointly develop a strategy for community engagement on the project.

A big thank you to those community organizations who have already given their support to the project. You’ll be hearing from us.